Vertigo,
I'm lucky. First a molecular biologist when I needed one, now a climber.
I have a couple of questions...
1. How high could a man free climb in an hour? He's in good shape and has enough experience to be confident. It's not a challenging climb. There are plenty of firm handholds. He starts from close to sea level, at a temp of 35C. He has blue shoes and a tattoo of Buffy on his shoulder. Okay, the last bit isn't true.
2. Once up, how quickly could he abseil to the bottom?
3. I've looked up enough for this to know what an ascender is. Has anyone ever invented a mechanical ascender to drag lazy people or a rope? If not, I've invented a fictional one.
Thanks
(sorry if this double posts, I had connection issues)
1. I've never really sat down and figured this out, but assuming it is relatively steep but not too difficult a fit solo climber would probably climb around 300-400m in an hour. Incidentally, technically, free climbing is not used to describe the type of climbing I think you mean here. Free climbing means only that you are not using artifical aids such as a peg hammered into the rock to stand on.
Free climbing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia A free climber would normally still use ropes and such like for protection and would be much slower, probably no more than 100m in an hour. I am assuming you mean solo climbing - that is with no aids and no protection, just you climbing on your own.
2. How fast he could abseil would depend on how long his rope is. Typical climbing ropes are 50-60m (and are not that light). Assuming he is carrying one rope of 50m then he can only make a maximum abseil of 25m (the rope must be doubled so it can be pulled through and used for the next pitch) so he will have to make at least 12 abseils (assuming 300m). Each abseil would only take a couple of minutes but then pulling through the rope and setting up the next would take another couple of minutes so in total it would not be much quicker than going up, which is about typical in my experience. It would be even slower if there were two of them, obviously, as only one can abseil on a rope at a time. In the mountains we always try to down-climb rather than abseil as it is much quicker. So if your climb is not too hard it might be better to do that. Another point is that you can probably half the height climbed if it is dark or wet (I know you author types - always like a bit of darkness and rain for excitement).
3. An ascender is essentially a ratchet that goes up the rope but not down. Given two of them it is possible to ascend a thin rope even if it is hanging completely free. You may have seen them being used in documentaries set in jungles where they are typically used to ascend into the jungle canopy. However it could not be used on its own to haul up a 'lazy' climber. Assuming they are least making some effort, the easiest way to help them would be to simply tie a rope to them and haul from above, assisting their own efforts. For a completely incapacitated climber a pulley system can be set up using a few carabiners and some short bits of rope. With such a system one man can haul another vertically up - it's hard work but do-able (I've done it). Incidentally you can easily make an ascender from a second peice of thinner rope around 1m long and a couple of 'special' knots. You don't actually need a mechanical ascender.
Now I see why you're a Mad Mountain Man...
Re AMS: can someone get it at, say 3,000 metres? And am I correct in saying the frostbite only happens because the blood supply withdraws from the extremities to keep the core warm, and the tissue therefore freezes? Why does it always look black? And what is the best way to treat it if there's two of you, in a forest, one can light a fire, and there's a small shelter, a bit like a wigwam?
I read 'Into Thin Air' once and that put me off mountains forever...
Thanks Vertigo (which I never suffer from, but just don't like going up mountains. I like helicopters, and other heights, though.)
What height someone gets AMS depends on a lot of factors. Different people are affected at different heights. The more exertion you do, the more likely you are to be affected. How well acclimatised you are; going straight from sea level to altitude is bad, ascend slowly over several days/weeks (depending on the height) and you won't get it at all. As I've said before I suffer badly from AMS and if I go out to the Alps by car and go straight up to 3000m the next day (as I have done too often) then I will perform really badly and will be in a bad way that night (actually I will be bad like this at just 2500m with no acclimatisation). The AMS symptoms are not instant as you gain height. If you climb up and then descend immediately you will not suffer them at all (other than breathlessness). However if I climb rapidly to 3000m then stay the night I will suffer; Headaches that make the worst hangover seem like a party, feels like your eyes are going to pop out of their sockets, nausea, sometimes actual vomiting, complete loss of appetite. My girlfriend loves it - she says it's the only time she can easily out perform me in the hills .
You're partially right on the frostbite front. The process you describe is more commonly associated with the onset of hypothermia (another killer). However frostbite (and the milder frostnip) are partially caused by the same mechanism. In this case the body is not trying to protect it's core temperature as with hypothermia. You can get frostbite whilst you actually feel quite warm. What happens is that the surface blood vessels constrict in respone to extreme cold, this means that any exposed skin starts receiving less blood and so cools even further eventually resulting in the skin being frozen which starts to kill the cells. As to why they turn black, I'm not too sure, just dead I guess.
The best treatment is rewarming, the quicker the better, but not so fast as to cause burns. However this should not be done at all if there is a chance of the tissue refreezing as then even more damage will be done. To do this you can simply get the person into a warm environment wrap them up and let their body do the warming. Remember this is not hypothermia the rest of their body is quite possibly still warm. Alternatively you can bathe the affected parts in warm water. Easy enough if it is fingers or toes, not so easy if it is ears, nose or cheeks which are other common locations. Normally we would immediately start you on a course of antibiotics as infection is a big risk early on. After that, believe it or not, it is best to leave the body to do its thing. Even with modern medicine frostbite is typically left until what is going to drop off has dropped off! A bit grim I know but that is the normal approach. Eventually anything that hasn't dropped off but is now kind of in the way (like bones which actually will end up openly exposed to the air!) might be amputated. But this will not usually be done until several months later unless there is infection or gangrene. In a low tech setting, you are not going to have antibiotics so infection becomes much more likely and consequently amputation becomes more likely.
Hope that helps! And yes 'Into Thin Air' is an interesting read (try Touching the Void by Joe Simpson for another and possibly better one).
By the way, for anyone who has seen Vertical Limit, the only treatment for AMS or HAPE and HACE (the more serious successors to AMS) is to descend... fast... faster still! All that stuff with the syringes of glucose (or whatever it was supposed to be) is complete and utter tosh. Once you have HAPE or HACE you have to descend fast... if you don't you die, simple! There are some drugs that stimulate your heart so more blood is pumped which can give you a little more time (I always carry these on high altitude climbs), but that is all they can do. You descend or die. AMS is not deadly and I treat as an inconvenience and a warning. If it is bad then I shouldn't go higher until I'm better acclimatised otherwise I run a much greater risk of the more serious edemas; HAPE and HACE.
